A View From the Capitol
by Clover80
Summary: A set of short one shots or drabbles from the perspective of different Capitol citizens. There's a stylist for District 3, an apathetic teenage girl, a die hard Hunger Games fan and collector. So come on in and get a view of Panem from those who live in the Capitol. Please read and review!
1. The Apathetic Teenager

The Games are on again and my Dad is all riled up. He keeps rambling on and on about how terrible the conditions are in the Districts and how someone should do something to stop the killing of children on live television. I don't get it, I mean I've seen the news footage of the Districts, we all see how skinny and underfed the people are every year when the reaping is on television but what can we do about it? The Capitol already gives people in the Districts tesserae and it's still not enough to keep them fed. They shouldn't be living off of handouts from us anyway; they just need to work harder. It's not like the Games are going to stop anyway too many people are getting rich from them and it's a huge part of the economy in the Capitol. People pay for tickets to the Tribute Parade, restaurants and hotels are full for weeks around the Training Center, the amount of money made from gambling alone could feed dozens of families for years! No, the Games aren't going to stop so it's better to just ignore them if you don't enjoy them because nothing is going to change. Anyway it really doesn't affect me or anyone that I know so why get worked up over a television show?


	2. The Stylist

Oh she looks so beautiful! The hair, the dress, the makeup! Being a stylist is so rewarding; you get to take a poor shabby looking kid from the Districts and make them look wonderful! When my team and I are done with them they look better than they ever have in their whole lives! I'm only the stylist for District 3, not one of those Career Districts which sends well fed, good looking tributes that can kill with their bare hands into the arena but I think that having to overcome the challenge of making a pale, grimy, underfed child look beautiful makes me a better stylist than those whose tributes are naturally good looking. A little spray tan, some makeup, a curling iron and rhinestones and voila they are a whole different person! Sometimes they're so grateful they can't even speak! They just sit there with tears in their eyes, too overcome to thank me! But that's ok, they don't have to thank me, their tears are thanks enough, I know how happy they are!


	3. The DIe Hard Fan

I love the Games. Admittedly I'm a little obsessed with them but I'm not the only diehard fan out there. I know everything there is to know about the Games; each Victor's kill count, what the arenas looked like, the Victor's training scores and weapons of choice. I've gone to the Tribute Parade every year since I was 10; I haven't missed one in 15 years. District 2 sends the strongest tributes and they are my favorites. I've met their most famous Victors and I always make sure to sponsor a tribute for them. One year I was able to donate a particularly large amount of money and Enobaria posed for a photo with me. It's hanging over my desk; we are both baring our teeth and growling at the camera; my teeth are not nearly as fabulous as hers though seeing as how hers are pointed and made of solid gold.

Every year the toy makers in the Capitol produce a 24 piece action figure set complete with miniature weapons and an info booklet listing each tribute's training scores, district, mentor, where they placed in the games, weapon of choice, kill count and cause of death. You can buy the whole set and a cornucopia with a circle of metal plates to stand the tribute dolls on. I have every set ever made including the special commemorative Quarter Quell sets that come with toy mutts, golden cornucopias and a video with footage of all the pre-games events as well as the games themselves with the extended footage that is cut out on live television.

My most treasured possession though is the sword that Brutus used to kill the tributes from Districts 4, 9, 11, 6, and the boy from 7. After the Games the weapons are auctioned off at an exclusive auction house. They are sold in original condition so if they came out of the arena smeared with blood and gore that is how they are sold. Weapons with blood on them sell for more money than those without. Brutus's sword has dried dark brown blood all over it. I could have bought a house for what I paid for it but I have enough houses. I keep it in a glass case over my bed. A spotlight shines on it 24 hours a day so that the blood can be seen. I think it's beautiful.


	4. The Undertaker

I am an artist and the dead are my canvas. The funeral parlors of Panem are my galleries. My official job title is "Post Mortem Tribute Reconstructionist." The mortuary where I work is has an exclusive deal with the Game Makers to reconstruct those tributes whose bodies can be reconstructed and make them presentable enough to be sent back to their families. This is usually possible but occasionally we get one that we can't fix. What do you do with a kid whose head has been smashed to a pulp with a mace? What do you do with a kid who's been ripped apart by mutts? Not much there to put back together much less to be made presentable. Most kids we find as much of them as we can, lay them out in a coffin, and dress them in clothes that cover the wounds they suffered in the arena.

The boy from District 10 whose face was literally crushed and torn off by the mace gets a closed casket funeral. I seal it up before I allow it to be shipped out. No one should have to see their child like that. I'm sure they already saw it on live television but seeing it up close and personal would be a shock they would never recover from. The boy was killed by the female tribute from District 1 and they are vicious and tend to like killing in grotesque ways with heavy weapons.

The girl who was ripped apart by mutts had most of her limbs stitched back together and I was able to cover the rest of her body with a synthetic skin so that she looks almost normal. Dead, but normal. She had been a pretty young woman of about 15 years- old with the red hair shared by so many of her fellow District 5 citizens. I send her back home in a long sleeved green dress with a gold shawl. It's dignified and compliments her hair. I painted her pale skin a normal color and applied a bit of brownish/red lipstick and mascara. I took the golden bracelet with a bolt of lightning that was her token in the arena and put it back on her arm. She looks peaceful, like she's sleeping. I feel good about the way she will look when she is returned to her family for burial. For me this girl is a minor masterpiece considering the condition she was in when she came to me. I take a photo of her before I close up her coffin. Her picture will be added to the "Dead Tributes" exhibit that the Capitol citizens can come and see in the Training Center every year after the games.


	5. The Party Animal

The Hunger Games means weeks of parties in the biggest houses and most exclusive clubs in the Capitol. There are also parties in the streets, parties in the Presidential Mansion and a huge, never ending party in the City Center. Capitol Hunger Games parties are an endless smorgasbord of food, liquor, and pills of all kinds. I tell myself every year that I'm not going to get so high or drunk that I don't remember anything and every year I wake up somewhere with only hazy memories of the previous few weeks. Last year I remember being in the City Center and watching a kid get decapitated on the jumbo-tron. Huge amounts of blood in high definition when you are amped on a handful of pharmaceutical candy can be toooooooooootally freaky! I was convinced that some of the blood had come out of the giant screen and splattered on me. In reality someone had just spilled their drink on me when they stumbled by.

One year I woke up with a tattoo of a bloody scythe on my shoulder. I had no idea why until I watched a rerun of the Games a few weeks later; I had bet big money on the tribute from District 9 and he had managed to get 5 kills with his curved silver farming implement- turned weapon. He won me loads of money before he was finally killed by the District 1 tributes. You can bet on the number of kills a tribute is going to get individually or in groups of two. You get paid for each one up to the number you bet on so I bet 4 kills and he got five so I got paid for four. Betting in twos gets you double the odds so I won a boatload. I'm pretty sure I spent half of it buying rounds of drinks for my friends and party drugs. I'm pretty sure, but not totally, it's all a little blurry…


	6. The Tourist

Every year my husband and I plan our vacation down to the last detail. We pick our destination, hovercraft flights, and choose our resort. We pick our tour times, which tributes we will be representing in the reenactments and even our food. When you tour an arena you get to choose from a menu of different foods that the tributes that fought there ate during their games. The meals are served by Avox waiters and we eat on real plates at tables that have been set up but still, it's so, I don't know, primitive! One year we even ate tree bark! Imagine having to live off of tree bark! Extremely bitter, chewy stuff, why a tribute would want to live on it is beyond me! In the Quarter Quell arenas the food gets parachuted in! In has to be in the arena from the second Quarter Quell; all of the natural food and water sources in that arena were poisoned. Even the flowers emitted a sedative like substance and they still do which I have to admit is not entirely unpleasant.

We spend a week at each arena site and participate in all of the battles that the tributes we represent participated in. The blood bath is always the most exciting because there are so many people running around and screaming and you get to pick up real weapons! Once I got to swing a mace and reenact 7 kills! At the end my husband and I had to fight each other and it was sooo exhilarating! When it was over we just could not keep our hands off of each other! We always pay extra to represent the tributes who survived the longest and sometimes the Victors but not always. If we have a particular favorite from a certain Games we represent them even if they didn't last very long.

Also, the souvenir stands are to die for! You can buy jewelry made from arena rocks, t-shirts with the Victor's name, Game number, and District symbol on them, even parachutes with District numbers on them just like the real ones! You can get your picture taken in tribute outfits during the fake battles or on a stage with a backdrop. We always buy a video of our reenacted games and our families love to see them when we come home! I think my favorite things though are the coffee mugs that have pictures of the Victors right after it's been announced that they won. I have one from every arena we've visited, 14 in all! They're all on display in my china cabinet; I have Finnick Odair's right in front! I must admit I just love the sight of that boy bare chested and holding up his bloody trident!


	7. The Victor's Doctor

Most things I can fix. I can make a Victor's scars disappear, staunch their bleeding, and clear up any infections that they have. I can heal broken bones and replace teeth that have been knocked out but there are some things that even I can't fix. I can't reattach body parts that were severed several days or even hours before. I can't reverse necrosis or gangrene. Dead flesh is dead flesh-period. I can remove a ruptured spleen and heal burns so terrible that you might wish you had died instead of surviving to feel the pain.

Poison-that's another tricky thing for doctors. Some poisons kill slowly, some kill quickly and some just causes insanity. Fast acting poisons like Nightlock I can't stop. One it hits your blood stream you're a goner. Other things like Tracker Jacker venom I have an antidote for but it depends on how much venom a person has ingested as to what I can do for them. Obviously death results from too much venom all at once but with slightly less venom a person survives but with permanent brain damage.

A lot of insanity that is seen in the Hunger Games is caused by Tracker Jacker venom. Since the arenas are all man made the poison can also be put into any kind of food or vegetation that the tributes might encounter. Venom is routinely in the fruits and other edible plants in the arena and is put there purely to make the tributes hallucinate and cause a show. Crazed tributes make for a good TV most of the time. There was that one kid who went crazy and started cannibalizing the others; there was a huge drop in the ratings and the kid was soon killed in a landslide. Most tributes who are truly are insane are killed off at some point by the game makers. Although most of the Victors are a little insane if you ask me, they have to be to kill the way they did.

That's another thing I can't fix-Post Traumatic Stress. All of the Victors come out of the arena with it but there's nothing I can do for it. Well, that's not exactly true; I can do something for it but I'm not allowed to. The Capitol refuses to allow Victors to receive any treatment for any mental issues they leave the arena with. President Snow doesn't want them to forget whatever horrors they endured, he wants them to remember the terror they felt for the rest of their lives.


	8. The Sponsor

"How much money are we talking?" I ask the vicious looking young woman across from me. Johanna Mason. Her hair is chopped off at uneven lengths, the longest pieces barely touching her shoulders, black eyeliner smeared around her eyes and a diamond stud in her nose.

"A lot. Cameron can win the games but he needs an axe. The Careers got the only one that was at the Cornucopia. You want to see a good show and back a future Victor send- him the axe. He'll fucking slaughter the rest of the tributes," she assures me snorting a line of white powder off of the back of her hand.

"So what do I get if he wins?" I ask, already knowing what I'm going to demand as payment.

"You get respect for sponsoring a killing machine," she answers.

"No, if he wins I get a night with him-for free. If he loses I get you. Come to think of it I want Odair too. You're friends aren't you? Talk him into sweetening the deal for me and I'll not only send your tribute an axe I'll make sure he has food through the rest of the games."

"Fuck you," she says without emotion and stands up kicking her chair back behind her. She turns around and strides for the door like she doesn't have a care in the world.

"Hey! You owe me for coke!" I yell after her. She turns, pulls a diamond handled knife that matches her nose stud from her belt and hurls it towards me before I can even blink. It thuds into the wall by my head.

"That ought to cover it," she growls and slams out the door. The joke is on her though; she just bought her tribute's death. I'll just make a phone call and he'll be dead by the end of the day.


End file.
